Category Archives: South America

Imagine that: One moment you’re focusing on the tiny rigging adjustments that may help qualify you for sailing events in the upcoming Rio Olympics, and the next you’re swimming in sewage because your boat hit a submerged sofa that someone threw away.

Olympic sailing hopefuls are reporting that Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay, site of the 2016 Summer Olympics’ sailing and windsurfing events, is truly fouled by raw sewage and garbage. One Brazilian athlete says he’s come across four human corpses while sailing on the bay.

Brazil is making major efforts to clean up the site, but many critics fear it’s too little, too late. This is just the latest take on a familiar Olympics story: huge construction costs and delays, allegations of managerial incompetence, corruption, and human rights violations, and a sense of sinking dread over misplaced priorities. But you can’t argue with the TV ratings.

The idea that water should have its own complex SDG, rather than being dispersed among other goals, seemed to be widely held and agreed upon at the event. Incorporating water issues into other goals without having a separate item for it could result in water-related issues evaporating in the mix.

Panelists agreed that water is too often taken for granted, and not often-enough planned for in proactive and constructive ways. In other words, you consider it separately to help ensure it gets paid for.

“Any time an issue is cross-cutting, like water, you can be sure that some of your targets will be lost in other targets,” said Lesha Witmer, a steering committee member and co-coordinator of The Butterfly Effect coalition of NGOs. “If you have a dedicated goal, it can’t *not* be represented in a country’s national budget.”

World Water Day (WWD) falls annually on March 22. However, because that date is a Saturday this year, many activities will take place on Friday, March 21. This year’s theme is “water and energy.” The oft-repeated phrasse “water-energy nexus” refers to the numerous interdependencies between water and energy; the two are inextricably linked and heavily influenced by climate change.

A lot of us incessantly check email, apps and websites on our smartphones. We joke, semi-seriously, about the addiction. Well, now we have help in our struggle that provides built-in motivation, because taking advantage of it will directly benefit others trapped in a far worse struggle.

Take part in UNICEF’s Tap Project, and for every 10 minutes you manage not to touch your phone, a donation will be made to provide help to the 768 million people around the world who lack access to clean water. And if you can’t put the thing down during the day, take heart: You can rack up time while you sleep. Whatever time you log, the donated funds will finance construction and maintenance of water wells, water pipes to rivers, and purification equipment, according to UNICEF.

Using the browser on your phone, go to uniceftapproject.org to take part.

The prediction that water will outstrip oil — and every other scarce natural resource — as a factor in global conflict has been around for a long time. After all, without water, everybody and everything dies. There is no substitute for it. Among water-stressed regions, where is conflict likely to strike, and when? In many places, it’s already happening.

Conflict is widespread and ongoing because it can take many forms besides all-out war. In some areas, competition over water may be at the root of tensions between warring factions, though not the only cause. In certain conflicts, water resources may be military or terrorist targets, either to capture or to destroy as a way of hurting the enemy. Elsewhere, protests over water shortages resulting from perceived mismanagement can erupt in violence. The Pacific Institute studies these issues; the conflict chronology at the link below is especially interesting because it shows the whole gamut of water-related struggles.

A useful backgrounder on water-related conflict can be found in Suzanne Goldenberg’s recent piece for The Guardian, also linked below. It identifies six “regions at risk,” due to extreme drought and/or tension over shared resources: California, Brazil, Middle East (Iran, United Arab Emirates, Jordan), North Africa (Egypt and Ethiopia), South Asia (eastern Pakistan, northern India), and China. Stephen Leahy’s IPS article and Giulio Boccaletti’s op-ed for The Nature Conservancy further fill in the picture and scope of global water (in)security.

One of the benefits of living in Geneva, Switzerland, is that I have access to the United Nations and international organizations that work with it. WaterLex, for example, is an international NGO that partners with UN Water. It takes an interesting, forward-looking, “lawyerly” approach to working on issues related to freshwater scarcity. The group, with a staff of seven based here, helps water-governance stakeholders in various countries establish policies and standards that comply with the human right to water and sanitation (HRWS). To do its work, the staff consults with more than 100 international experts in water management, development and law.

Many water NGOs work on access to water, helping people in water-stressed communities survive by delivering clean water, digging wells, installing pumps, and so forth. WaterLex attacks the problem close to its root and in a way that helps enable water security for future generations: It trains lawmakers and others with influence over water resources in a community, or a country, on how to implement new legal frameworks in which the human right to water is central.

WaterLex Executive Director Jean-Benoit Charrin co-founded the organization in 2010, the same year the human right to water and sanitation became fully recognized. I spoke with him on Tuesday at the WaterLex offices down the street from the Palace of Nations (UN). The rest of the staff, a mix of lawyers and operations experts, were away on missions. Although I would have liked to meet them, I’m glad they were off doing their work.

“There are four things we never want to hear people say again,” Charrin said. “That they didn’t know there was a problem. That they know there is a problem, but they don’t know how to deal with it. That they know there is a problem and how to deal with it, but they don’t know how to get the money. And finally, that they know there is a problem but they don’t care.” He paralleled the four statements succinctly with four WaterLex work areas: providing assistance with information, capacity-building, budgeting, and accountability. Learn more about the group’s work below.

With communities in Chile’s Atacama Desert — one of the world’s driest — competing with copper mines for dwindling water supplies, some of the country’s lawmakers have submitted a bill that would force mining companies to use desalinated Pacific Ocean water, according to reports in Bloomberg and Mining.com.

A statement from Chile’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the National Congress, calls for mining companies that use 150 liters (40 gallons) of water per second to begin using desalinated water in order to preserve freshwater for other uses. Some mining companies already use desalinated water, others don’t. There is no word yet on when the upper house, the Senate, will address the legislation.

One third of the world’s copper supplies comes from Chile, and one third of the Chilean government’s revenue comes from copper exports — making mining one of the country’s most important industries as well as one of its biggest users of water. According to a report in BNamericas, the industry’s need for water is expected to increase by 38 % by 2021.

According to Nestle, the paper “focuses on actions Nestlé has taken to improve its human rights performance at both country operations and corporate level,” and assesses data from Angola, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Russia, Sri Lanka, and Uzbekistan.

Certain NGOs see it as little more than window dressing on the company’s reputation. Among charges surfaced in the FoodNavigator.com article: The report is selective, with a limited scope and significant omissions, and that it looks at corporate policy rather than practice. The NGOs concerned are Blue Planet Project, FIVAS,Food and Water Watch, and Public Services International. Nestlé says it rejects the NGOs’ criticisms.

This is far from the first time Nestlé has come under fire from NGOs and other organizations. Frequently cited as the world’s largest producer of bottled water, it has been criticized for wanting to privatize water (which it denies). The company has gone to court in several places, opposed by groups trying to defend regional groundwater from being taken and sold elsewhere at a profit to others.